January 31, 2016

Yet again I have received a JuiceSelvKasse from Årstiderne to keep my juicer busy in my little kitchen. Each JuiceSelvKasse contains ingredients for three different juice and for two portions of each juice type. When I received the latest version for the JuiceSelv Kasse I started off making the most green and healthy looking juice in form of this FUNNY FUNKY FENNEL. I was positive surprised, that despite the healthy green colour, the taste of the juice was not ugly in any way.

FUNNY FUNKY FENNEL: - 5-6 servings

1 cucumber

1 lemon with peel

4 apples

350 g celery

1 brocolli

2 fennels

Clean and rinse all the ingredients.

Juice everything together.

Serve cold.

Store the remaining of the juice cold in the refrigerator cold for another 1-½ day.

You can always discuss, if chili is a herb or not. Chili is used for seasoning of your food just like herbs, so in my opinion I will regarded as a herb !

And at the same time is a way for me to use up some left-over chillies in my kitchen after I have been serving chili con carne for my mother. She found my chili con carne to quiet hot, but I told her, that this hot food would give her some body heat, as she had been complaining about the cold Danish Winter weather. I am now considering if, I should tell her, that the glass of orange jam, which she will get also contains chili ?

To make this specific jam I using similar method, when I making this bergamot orange jam.You boil the citrus fruit, followed by blending the citrus fruit and finally you add in sugar to decided sweetness, so all in all a very easy jam to make.

Orange jam with chili:

1000 g organic oranges

20 g red chili without seeds - medium chopped

575 g sugar - more or less depends on your desired sweetness level

1 teaspoon apple vinegar

2 oranges - organic

2 tablespoon of almonds - without skin

550 g sugar or 600 g sugar is more sweetness is preferred

Wash the oranges. Remove the green top from the orange,

Place the citrus fruits in a small cooking pot, which when is filled with water.

Place the lid on the cooking pot. Let the citrus fruits boiled (softly) for 45 minutes. Cooking depends on the softness of the oranges. For harder orange increase the cooking time to 1 hour.

Remove the oranges and place them in a blender together with the chopped chili .

Blend everything into a homogeneous mass.

Pour the blended oranges into a clean cooking pot.

Add the majority of the sugar and stir well.

Taste the jam. Adjust the taste to your desired preference by adding in extra sugar for more sweetness and vinegar for more fruit notes.

Prepare the jam glasses by filling them with boiling water. Another thing you can do is to store the jam cold afterwards.

It is an excellent combination of sweetness and freshness with plenty of citrus flavour.

My good girl friend in Horsens again needed to be a part of the photo, so it is her fingers stealing a raspberry for her own dessert, as it turned out later :-)

The only changes, which I did for this recipe was to lower the amount of whipping cream, as the whipping cream with sold in 250 ml or 500 ml portions in Denmark and not in 600 ml portion. So instead of 600 ml whipping cream I used a combination of 500 ml whipping cream and 100 ml milk.

January 22, 2016

Today it is whole grain day here in Denmark (Årets fuldkornsdag). The daily recommendation for each Dane is to eat 75 whole grain/day, however as an average Dane we only manage to eat 63 g whole grain/day.

Therefore this seed snapper bread from "Det æltefri grydebrød" could be one way for you to enjoy some more whole grain today.

Seed snapper bread "Frøsnapper"brød: - 1 bread

2-3 g fresh yeast

50 g sour dough - optional

350 g water

2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon sugar

100 g whole grain wheat flour

50 g sunflower seeds

50 g pumpkin seeds

25 g linseeds

25 g sesameseeds

200 g wheat flour tipo 00

oat flakes - optional

Stir yeast, sour dough andwater together in a big mixing bowl.Add salt, sugar and the various seeds into the liquid and stir well.

Afterwards add the whole grain and tipo 00 wheat flour and stir very well with a cooking spoon.

Rise the dough to riseat roomtemperature overnight - minimum12 hours.

Take the dough out off the mixing bowl, move 1/3 of the dough in over the rest of the dough, keep repeating this process until you have a small size of the dough.

Clean the mixing bowl for any dough leftovers.

Glaze the dough bowl with oil.

Place the dough again in a clean dough, let is rise again for 2 hours.

Heat up the cast iron cooking pot (2 l) incl. lid on a rackin the lower part of the oven at 250°C (fan oven) for ½ hour.

Remove the hot cast iron cooking from the oven, remove the lid. Cover the bottom of the cooking pot with oat flakes, as this will prevent the dough from sticking to firm to the surface.

Place the dough in the hot cast iron cooking pot.

Put the lid back on. Place the cooking pot in the lower part of the oven, let it bake at 250°C for 30 minutes.

Remove the lid from the cast iron cooking pot, and let the bread bake at 225°C for another 15 minutes.

Let the bread cold down on the cast iron cooking pot for 30 minutes.before it is taken out.

January 19, 2016

Continueing with my theme of January on citrus I have been baking another version of a lemon moon cake (know in Denmark as citronmåne), which time in form of a mazarin cake. I found the original recipe in the weekly newspaper magazine "Spis & Bo" (issue 10. October 2015).

January 17, 2016

I have found this recipe on granola with mixed nuts in the monthly magazine "Samvirke", issue December 2015. I have made no modification to the actually recipe. I noticed, that the baking process in fan oven more easily turns the granola mix more dark in colour with more of a brown, burned flavour. So perhaps the temperature should be reduced with 5-10'C ?

Granola with mixed nuts:

200 g hazelnuts

200 g almonds

100 g pumpkin seeds

75 g sesame seeds

150 g raisins

300 rough oat flakes

4 dl apple juice

3 tablespoon maple syrup

3 tablespoons oil

Heat up the fan oven to 185'C.

Add all the dry ingredients into a larger mixing bowl.

Stir the apple juice, maple syrup and oil together in a smaller mixing bowl.

Stir the liquid phase into all the dry ingredients.

Pour the granola mixture on to two baking tray covered with baking paper.

Bake the granola mix at 185'C for 15-20 minutes, before the granola mix is covered with baking paper to prevent the granola from becoming to burnt in the colour.

January 16, 2016

If you use pre-boiled chickpeas you can very easy make your own humus in no time at all. And most of the ingredients will be sometimes, which you would normally have in your kitchen cupboards. In this recipe I have used some yogurt, this is not a necessary ingredients, so you can this humus only from chickpeas, lemon, olive oil, salt and pepper.

Besides from using this humus as dip for fresh vegetable, it could also be used as sandwich spread. Another recipe on humus dip could be this humus of edam beans and peas.

Yesterday evening I had the pleasure of having a nice group of girl friends coming by for drink, snack, coffee/tea, bread and cakes combined with a great talk of what is on-going in our life's right here and now. We refer to each other as "Stilpigerne", which could be translated into "The Stylish Girls", as we meet up back 17 years ago, when we individual signed up for a course on make-up and cloth style. And as a group we clicked, and since when we have been meeting regular every 2-3 month.

We started by having some ordinary cripes served together with a mixture of cocktail tomatoes, cucumber and carrots served together with humus with lemon.

Afterwards I served some chocolate bun made from a bread flour mix, which had a great taste, so here I have find a recipe on. The cake part was a lemon moon mazarin cake.

I received a nice collection of hostess gifts in form of chocolate, tea, liquorice and "home-made" egg. "Home-made" eggs are eggs from one of my girl friends own farm chicken.

January 13, 2016

This recipe on malt bread with almonds and cranberry I have from the baking event "Rent mel i posen", where the owner of Bønnen & Herligheden shared this recipe with us.

The malt flour, which I used for my own version is much lighter in colour compared to the malt flour, which we at this baking event. So another time I will increase the amount of malt flour from 10 g to 20-30 g to get a more dark colour a la rye bread.

The use of whole almonds and cranberries gives a nice structure/look in the final bread. This bread is excellent for tapas or cheese.

January 10, 2016

Perhaps you would have thought, that I would start my January focus citrus fruits making some jam ? Well I think, that I am surprising you by actually baking a bread with orange from my new bread book. Both the dough and the final baked bread has a very nice and pleasant citrus flavour.

Overall another excellent bread from using the method of baking bread in cooking pots.

January 09, 2016

As company for the saffron ice cream for the Christmas lunch I decided to make a second ice cream using chai powder (similar done in the chai scones). Using these pre-mix of chai powders is a very easy way for making various product with a chai spicy flavour.

At the same time is serving as a good start to my TO DO LIST 2016, where I already can tick of a point on the list :-)

January 08, 2016

For my mother´s 80 year birthday I gave her a week-end stay at the manor house Broløkke as present. She like many other older people have plenty of thing and stuff for her home, so she is not lacking more things. Instead I find that a present in form of stay away from home is a much better gift. She gets something to look forward to as well as talking about with other people, followed by the actually stay getting away and finally she gets something to talk about afterwards.

In a stay at Broløkke is included both breakfast and 3 course evening menu. The evening starts with, that all the guests gathers in the red living room for a glass of sparkling wine and a talk about the menu of the evening.After the evening menu all the guests are again welcomed back to the red living room for evening coffee, and here the talks follow freely between all the guests.

January 07, 2016

After December, which for me always seams to be a short month of approx 3 weeks due to the many holidays, a longer, darker and perhaps colder month in form of January arrives after the joyful light Christmas month.

The good thing about January is, that the days becomes something like 1-5 minutes longer day by day. And snow covered landscape can also brings more light into a dark time.

Another brilliant thing about January is, that it is the peak season for citrus fruit such as mandarin, clementine, orange, blood orange (my favourite citrus fruit), grapefruit, lime and lemon, so providing you with very options of filling up on C-vitamin to fight of the season of colds.

So here in January I will have focus on using all the lovely citrus fruits in my kitchen for sure to make some jam, freshly squeezed juice and perhaps even some cake ?

January 05, 2016

Wonderful coloured juice with a great taste, which I actually enjoyed drinking without making "ugly faces" ! It is the first time for me making juice with turmeric roots, which I were imaging would give much more colour than they needed up giving in the final juice.

The juice has flavour of red pepper fruits, which you however can not taste in the final juice. Here the ginger is the dominating flavour ingredients as usual.

RED SUNSET: - 4 servings

4 oranges without peel

600 g carrots

2 red pepper fruits - seeds and top removed

½ tuber of ginger

4-5 small turmeric roots

Clean and rinse all the ingredients.

Juice everything together.

Serve cold.

Store the remaining of the juice cold in the refrigerator cold for another 1-½ day.

January 03, 2016

I have recently found a bread book with focus on making breads without kneading, which afterwards is baked in a cooking pot in a fan oven at 250'C with the lid on for some part of the baking time. It also referred to the Best Bread of the World !

Baking a cooking pot bread is very easy and it does not involve, that you have to touch the dough with your fingers, which can be disliked by some persons (not me in person). The bread dough is stirred together with a cooking spoon in a large mixing bowl prior to the resting time. After the resting/raising time the bread dough is poured in a very, very hot cooking pot and baked.

Before you start to bake your own cooking pot bread you should be aware of, that the bread process is a time consuming process, as the resting process takes a minimum of 14 hours prior to the actual baking of the bread. So making cooking pot bread is much more of a planning process than a kneading process.

This bread book is written in Danish. The title is "Det æltefri grydebrød" and is written by Kirsten Skaarup.

So you will in the future be able to read more, as I bake my way through this new bread book in my little kitchen.

January 02, 2016

to all of you from Hannibal the Cat and I. We hope you will get an exciting, promising and healthy New Year here in 2016 with plenty of sunshine, some white snow to bring some light into a dark Winter season and less wind during the rowing season !!!

Here in 2015 my little kitchen got the final finishing touch in form of hand-made ceramic tiles in five different colour, which was placed according to my own mosaic design. All in all my kitchen project has turned out as I imaging it should be like.

Right here and now I am in the line up to changing my entrance into a more light and less clothed room. However, this involves replacement of the floor tiles !!!! And the though of having brick workers inside my home again is a dreadful idea !

During Springtime 2016 all the windows of the house will also be replaced with new energy-efficient windows. Hopefully there will still be room for all my many small light houses in the windows ?

My new best kitchen friend the Juicer and I have formed a great friendship ! Together with the JuiceSelvKassen as a frequent weekly box from Årstiderne we have managed make 29 different juices with plenty of vegetable insides. Some of these juices have taste wonderful, while other have been having a more pretty colour than taste !

Well my way of baking through the entire bread book called "Hjemmebagt" has been moving so slow, so that I did no bake any of these recipes in this bread book. If I maintain this baking speed during 2016, I will be finished baking in around 20 years time, around the time, when I will be retiring from work !!!! Could be that 2015 will bring more baking momentum.

Perhaps I have not been baking any of the bread from "Hjemmebagt", meanwhile I have been turning more and more to baking cooking pot bread (Grydebrød) such as Best bread of the World (Verdens bedste brød). Here "my" sour dough, which I managed to hold of at baking event (Rent mel i posen) has taken up residence in my refrigerator. Some friends and colleagues also have got a portion of this sour dough. This specific sour dough has a lovely apple vinegar flavour, which I am crazy about.

As usual I am still participating in the monthly virtual tea table called Tea Time Treats hosted by two food bloggers in the UK. It is great fun for me to work the various theme selected for these monthly tea tables. And I will continue to participate in these monthly virtual tea tables here in 2015, as it bringing me a lot of inspiration to both me and my little kitchen.

As usual the month of December has been a very, very busy month for me in my kitchen, as I am working on selecting interesting Christmas recipes as well as actually making the Christmas stuff, so I can share an daily blog post with a Christmas recipe with you in the count down for Christmas !!! For me this process is a little bit like mood therapy, a way of keeping up my mood during a long, dark, gray and rainy Winter season, as it keep me busy inside of hiding under my duvet like a little sleepy brown bear !!! So therefore I will already now promise, that you will get Christmas Calender again in 2015 :-) Traditionally I invited various friends living in the area of Vejle for a gløgg evening, so they can taste some of my Christmas creations.

As regular theme blog posts during every single month I have shared the following type of blog posts with you:

blog introduction to each month with focus on a specific theme (starter in September 2013) - not done on a regular basic besides from Valentine theme in February, Easter in April and my classic Christmas Calendar in December. However, I thinking about how to twist this idea for reintroduction again here in 2016.

recipe on cocktail and drinks (started in 2011) - even less regular in 2015 - so plenty of room for improvement in 2016

as usual very regular contribution to Tea Time Treat (started in December 2012)

recipe on ice cream (started in October 2013) - also quiet seldom in 2015 - so another area of improvement in 2016

So how did I get get along with my TO-DO-LIST of 2015 ??? Well I managed to less than 50% of my list, which means I will have some interesting thing to do here in 2016 :-) However, a very typical Danish saying is, what counts is to be part of the game and not necessary win the game !! Well in this Olympic year of 2016 it is the winning part, which is the most important part.

Coming to the end of this very long blog text I would like to share a "TO DO" list with you of the things, which I would like work with in my kitchen during 2015:6

TO DO LIST 2016:

collect sloe during Autumn 2016, so I can make my own sloe gin

collect elderberry during Autumn 2016

make macaroons

make a ginger bread decoration for Christmas 2016

make my own marzipan from almonds for Christmas 2016

work with more sugar candy type such as nougat and marshmallows

make more ice cream

enjoy more drinks and cocktail

use the herbs and other stuff from my kitchen garden / nature more actively

work more with cakes and desserts from the French kitchen

make more soups

try to sell some of all my home-made jams

So let´s see how many of these "TO DO" points, which I managed to cross during the brand new year of 2016, at least I have 363 days in front of me to do something about it :-)

Kitchen status on 2015:Review day: 1 January 2016
Recipes baked during 2015 from "Hjemmebagt": 0 (2 accomplished at 31 December 2015)
Amount of new cooking books in my kitchen: 0 new cooking book (77 books at end of 2015)
Page views in 2015: 54.617 (total page views of 241.691 at 31st December 2015)
Publish posts in 2015: 182 posts (total posts of 1167 at 31st December 2015)

January 01, 2016

Jumping from 2015 into 2016 was done in the very good company of my good friends living in Horsens, while we enjoyed sushi from two different sushi places in Horsens combined with home-made ice creams and own creation of marzipan horn served together with champagne and mostly green and some black tea for me (the less advanced tea drinker !).

Eating sushi is very easy, as it only acquires, that you remove the sushi from the various take-away transport material, so no easy preparation in the kitchen !

As sushi is not to filling as a four course of menu of New Year 2014 we had on this lat evening of 2015 room for dessert in form of home made brownie and a selection of home-made ice creams (lavender ice cream, vanilla ice cream with figs, saffron ice cream and chai ice cream).

As we approached the transition from 2015 to 2016 we enjoyed some more champagne and my very own creation of a marzipan horn.